Taika Waititi on His Personal Connection To AKIRA and How Slow WE'RE WOLVES Is Progressing

Taika Waititi's Marvel Cinematic Universe directorial debut Thor: Ragnarok arrives in theaters next week and will surely gain the New Zealander a mass of new fans. Getting that amount of attention will likely earn him other big-budget directing gigs.

The biggest one that Waititi is reportedly considering to direct is the live-action Akira film, which Warner Bros. has been developing for years. Whether that happens or not, things aren’t looking too promising for the long-rumored sequel to What We Do In The Shadows titled We're Wolves.

i09 spoke to Waititi about Thor, but asked him if he had a personal connection to Akira. He responded:

"My mom took me to see Akira in the cinema in 1989, or whenever it came out in New Zealand, and it was a huge turning point in my life for what I imagined animation to be and realizing what it could be. It’s stuck with me this whole time and I feel, visually, the film was such an amazing thing.

So I read the [comic] books and I was always more curious as to what a broader adaptation of the books might look like instead of a remake of the film, which doesn’t need to be remade. But I do feel there could be a cool live action adaptation of the books."

It is not a sure thing that he will be attached to that movie, but it seems possible it could be his next movie. And even if it’s not, his next film will not be We’re Wolves:

“It is slowly developing at the slow pace Jemaine [Clement] and I usually work, which is excruciatingly slow,. So while we do these things on the side we do slowly chip away at that thing and write down ideas. But we usually write down like one sentence a month.”

Not the most promising thing to hear. 

In the meantime we have a pretty great film to look forward to, Thor: Ragnarok, opens November 3rd.